THE REARVIEW MIRROR (AS I LAY DYING)

 THE REARVIEW MIRROR  8 Responses »
Sep 252016
 

Rearview Mirror

 

Okay, I know some of you are probably laughing, or trying not to laugh. But I’m serious here. Yes, Tim Lambesis tried to hire a hit man to whack his wife and he’s now in prison for that. And yes, he’s now suing personnel at two San Diego County detention facilities for failing to provide medication to ameliorate the side effects of steroid withdrawal, leading to “painfully sensitive breast enlargement”. But even though reports of this latest occurrence are what dragged As I Lay Dying up from the depths of my memory, let’s just put all that embarrassment aside for a few minutes and reflect upon the music of As I Lay Dying.

Actually, I only want to reflect on six songs, two from Shadows Are Security (2005), two from An Ocean Between Us (2007), and two from The Powerless Rise (2010). All but one come with official videos. Continue reading »

ONE HELL OF A WEEK TO BE A METALHEAD

 Mosh Pit  17 Responses »
May 102013
 

(NCS writer BadWolf, who is based in Toledo, Ohio, shares some thoughts about a week that brought us horrors from Cleveland and a rude surprise in San Diego.)

Phew.

It’s been quite the week, hasn’t it? I’m not a higher-power sort of man, but if I were I would call this week a ‘test.’ In particular, it’s been a rough week to be a man with any interest in the well-being of women, in general. As a metalhead, and as an Ohioan.

Let’s recap:

Earlier this week, three women in Cleveland escaped from, according to estimates, a decade of private captivity. These three young women, Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight, were kidnapped and held against their will in what any reasonable person can assume was a private hell, set up for the sexual satisfactions of their captor. A six-year-old girl was found at the house, and is thought to be Berry’s daughter, born in captivity and conceived through rape. According to some reports, an unnamed victim said she was impregnated and forced to miscarry through blunt force trauma.

Fuck. Continue reading »

TIM LAMBESIS PLEADS NOT GUILTY; BAIL SET; FURTHER DETAILS OF PROSECUTION’S CASE COME OUT

 Metal News  17 Responses »
May 092013
 

I actually don’t plan to follow this morbid story every step of the way, but based on our web traffic count, there’s clearly been a lot of interest by NCS readers in the arrest of As I Lay Dying’s Tim Lambesis for allegedly attempting to pay someone to murder his wife, Meggan Lambesis. So, we’ll follow the story at least a little bit further.

The latest news (as reported here) is that Tim Lambesis was arraigned in Vista Superior Court (San Diego) this afternoon on one criminal charge of solicitation of murder, which carries a maximum penalty of 9 years in prison. He entered a plea of not guilty and bail was set at $8 million — although the prosecutors asked for bail in the amount of $20 million.

The court further ordered that if Lambesis makes bail, he is to have no contact with his wife or their three children. The next court date will apparently be a preliminary hearing on July 10.

Further details about the hearing and the prosecution’s case emerged from live tweets by Angie Lee, a freelance reporter for San Diego’s KFMB-TV who was in attendance. According to her tweets, prosecutors told the court the following: Continue reading »

TIM LAMBESIS (AS I LAY DYING) ARRESTED ON SUSPICION OF HIRING SOMEONE TO MURDER HIS WIFE

 Metal News  14 Responses »
May 072013
 

Our last post was a joke. Unfortunately, this one isn’t. FOX5-San Diego and Reuters are reporting tonight that Tim Lambesis, lead singer for As I Lay Dying and Pyrithion and the man behind Austrian Death Machine, has been arrested  after he allegedly hired someone to kill his estranged wife. Here’s more from the FOX5 report:

“Tim Lambesis, lead singer and co-founder of the heavy-metal group As I Lay Dying, was arrested at a store on Vista Way in Oceanside about 2 p.m., after allegedly soliciting an undercover detective to kill his spouse, an Encinitas resident, according to sheriff’s officials.

Authorities began investigating Lambesis, 32, in the case on Thursday, when they received information that he allegedly was trying to get someone to commit the slaying.

He was booked into the Vista Jail on suspicion of solicitation of murder.”

The reports don’t indicate that Lambesis has yet been charged, merely arrested. But if the reports are correct that his arrest was based on statements he made to an undercover detective, you can bet those charges will be forthcoming soon. Continue reading »

AS I LAY DYING: “AWAKENED”

 Album Reviews  12 Responses »
Sep 212012
 

(DGR reviews the new album by As I Lay Dying.)

As I Lay Dying are one of the few metalcore bands who still have new releases to look forward to. While the first two releases from this group may have been somewhat mixed, the quality and sheer heaviness that the band aimed for on the following releases, An Ocean Between Us and The Powerless Rise, is almost undeniable.

They’re able to take some fairly standard metalcore writing and advance it by adding elements of thrash, death metal, and even moving into the realm of groove. Though they’ve never been the perfect song-writers, I have often believed that As I Lay Dying were one of the few bands who could work well within the boundaries of the metalcore realm, because they’ve mastered what they can do for it and clearly have an understanding of what elements of that genre are boring, and how to spice things up. Very few bands can do that, and it really does require a love and reverence of the material that you’re working on in order to pull it off.

Now we have Awakened, a new As I Lay Dying disc with album art that veers dangerously close to Paradise Lost’s Tragic Idol in its color scheme, and that has seemingly sneaked up on us since, holy crap, this thing is out in a few days. Even though I really hadn’t heard anything from As I Lay Dying’s latest release prior to this review outside of the song “Cauterize” once or twice (and I have gained somewhat of a reputation for rarely liking the lead-off from any new disc because CHANGE IS BAD, GRAH!, though “Cauterize” is pretty alright), there was still reason to be excited. Continue reading »

BEARING WITNESS TO THE PROWLINGS OF THE BEAST

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Jun 272012
 

These are short notes about things I saw and heard over the last couple of days that I couldn’t make room for in any other post. And yes, I’m trying out yet another title for these posts. I confess that I’m still partial to “Brain Fuckerings! I Haz Thems!”, but the search goes on . . . In this post: Ensiferum, Testament, As I Lay Dying, and Beherit.

ENSIFERUM

I saw the artwork above. It definitely caught my eye, (a) because it’s for Ensiferum’s new album, Unsung Heroes, and (b) because it depicts the wise, godlike Väinämöinen from the Finnish Kalevala epic in gorgeous reddish colors with a forest and a lake and a vaulted sky of stars. Also a sword, a shield, and . . . what the hell is that thing he’s holding?  A harp of some kind perhaps?

Anyway, it’s a damned epic cover, and I expect no less from the music. The album will be released on August 27. As previously mentioned on this site, it’s available for pre-order at Finland’s Record Shop X (here), which ships worldwide.

TESTAMENT

I also heard a new song from Testament’s next release. It’s called “True American Hate”, and it will be on the group’s forthcoming album, Dark Roots of Earth, which is due on July 31 from Nuclear Blast Records. It includes kickass cover art, too. We featured it once before, but one good turn deserves another . . . Continue reading »

AMON AMARTH EURO TOUR (AND “GUARDIANS OF ASGARD” WITH LG PETROV)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jun 032011
 

I’m a day or two late reporting the schedule for Amon Amarth‘s European tour, but I forgive myself. What other U.S. metal blog is going to say anything about a European tour at all?

Exactly.   So there.

Yes, Amon Amarth will be embarking on a 15-country tour of the UK and the Continent beginning on October 12 in Stuttgart, Germany. Can you guess who will be supporting them on that tour? Go ahead — close your eyes so you don’t see the answer and take a guess.

If you guessed As I Lay Dying, then you’re a fucking genius. I sure wouldn’t have guessed that match-up, even though I like both bands and they’re both in the Metal Blade stable. If you do a word-association exercise, and you say the first band that comes to mind when someone says “AMON AMARTH!”, the odds are you’re not going to say “AS I LAY DYING!”

A band like Entombed would have been closer to what I would have guessed. But as it happens, you can sort of have that cake and eat it, too, because LG Petrov of Entombed provided guest vocals on “Guardians of Asgard” with Amon Amarth when the band played the Metalfest festival in Switzerland on May 29 — and of course it was captured on video. This is fan-filmed footage, so the audio quality isn’t ideal (though it isn’t terrible), but the video quality is pretty good.

Plus, I mean, it’s LG Petrov singing with Amon Amarth on “Guardians of Asgard”. If you’re as big a metal geek as I am (no need for you to confess out loud), you know you have to watch this, just so you’ll be able to die happy if you get flattened by a beer truck while crossing the street today. So, after the jump — Euro tour dates and that video. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT: SPECIAL COVERS EDITION

 THE SYNN REPORT  17 Responses »
Apr 292011
 

(I swear this was a coincidence. I wrote a post that went up earlier today on metal covers based on a single by Anachronaeon we received yesterday, and then our UK contributor Andy Synn delivered this special edition of THE SYNN REPORT about . . . covers. This is the kind of occurrence that sends me back to the dictionary once again to figure out the difference between synchronicity and serenditpity. Or maybe it’s both.)

Covers are a strange breed of song – they’re the equivalent of a parallel universe, an alternate history, a What If? Comic, an adaptation of your favourite book starring an unexpected actor, a Shakespeare play set in an average American high school…

Seriously though, they have a huge amount of potential, both to be intriguingly inventive and woefully horrendous. Their success (or lack thereof) depends on many factors, but mainly on the song-choice itself – is it a natural fit for the band? Do they have the intelligence to re-work it in a distinctive manner? Or is it simply enough to tear through it in their own inimitable style, making few changes, but relying on sheer power to see them through?

I have chosen 15 artists who have produced some of my own personal favourite covers, showcasing a variety of approaches, some fully traditional takes on the original, others totally reworked variations. If there’s one thing that these covers show however, it is the subtle threads that inter-link all different sub-genres of rock and metal, which allow bands to re-work them organically. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2010’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 8

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2010  8 Responses »
Jan 042011
 

So far, we’ve named 14 songs to our list of 2010’s most infectious tunes, and so far the songs have been without clean singing. No shock there, of course. But today we’re including a couple of exceptions to the normal rule around here, with songs from Soilwork and As I Lay Dying.

Both of these bands have been favorites of this site’s founders for many years. We’ve always found something to like in their albums, even when the overall album strength has dipped a bit, and 2010 was no exception. Plus, both bands put on great live shows, and we snap up tickets whenever they venture into the PNW.

Both bands released new albums in 2010 that we reviewed, and both albums contained multiple songs that made our master list of “most infectious” candidates. In the end, we picked one song from each. For a full explanation of what we mean by “most infectious”, read this. And to see the songs we’ve named so far, click the Category link over on the right called MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2010.

To read about and hear the songs we picked for our final list from Soilwork and As I Lay Dying, continue on after the jump. Continue reading »

THE ARTIST FORMERLY KNOWN AS DAN’S TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2010

 Listmania  31 Responses »
Nov 122010
 

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s guest post comes to us from Dan, who apparently is now called The Artist Formerly Known As Dan. Dan is an American temporarily transplanted to Adelaide, Australia. He has a list for you.]

So, I realize it’s cliche to make one of these lists (and maybe a bit premature?), but they’re usually useful for several reasons.  Firstly, it allows me to shamelessly plug the bands I like and push my agenda on you.  Secondly, it allows you to post lists of the records I forgot and tell me why my first list was wrong.  I can then subsequently go back to the records I may have forgotten or never owned in the first place.  Everyone should theoretically win here, since there is always music overlooked or forgotten about throughout the year.  So, let’s begin.

10. The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza – Danza III: The Series of Unfortunate Events

Technical, but so brutal.  A perfect recommendation for someone who listens to too much vanilla-breakdown deathcore (and, for some of you, “too much” implies listening to any deathcore at all).  I highly recommend seeing them in concert; they bring tons of energy.  Yippie-Kay-Yay-Motherfucker.

(more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

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